Back to Where You Once Belonged
by kerithwyn
Summary: Amber'verse Nick Lane shows up at Olivia's door. [Gen]


Back to Where You Once Belonged

Fandom: Fringe

Characters: Olivia Dunham, Nick Lane

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: ~1,450

Summary: Amber'verse Nick Lane shows up at Olivia's door.

Notes: Amber'verse, speculative: postulates that at some point, the characters regain their knowledge of the previous timeline.

Written for the Fringe kinkmeme using the following prompt:

Nick was never activated in the Amberverse timeline. What's he up to?

One moment Olivia knew her whole life, the pattern and weight of it; the next, she had two conflicting timelines warring for legitimacy in her head. One, the one she can verify with physical artifacts and electronic data, actually happened. The other, more convoluted than anything she could have imagined, is full of Peter.

She's still trying to sort out all the memories in her head and determine which ones are real-or more honestly, the ones she wants to be real. It's confusing enough that she's taken time off of work, with Broyles' blessing, to sit on her couch and just *think.*

There's a knock at the door.

Olivia clutches her drink more tightly. If that's Peter, she'll just- she'll just tell him to go away. She can't deal with-

It's not Peter.

She checks the peephole again in disbelief, and then opens the door.

"Olive?" Nick Lane's face splits into a goofy grin."Olive! It *is* you."

"N- Nick?" she says, too startled for anything but a blunt, unfiltered response. "What are you doing here?"

"You mean, 'why aren't you dead?'" Nick's blue eyes are smiling despite the words. "Yeah, I've had a tough couple of days with that one myself."

And it's suddenly clear that the Fringe team members aren't the only ones who've regained the memories of the other timeline. Considering Nick's former (current?) powers and his involvement in the effort to rescue Peter, it only makes sense that-

"You'd...better come in," she says, and motions him in. Olivia remembers her manners, mostly as a delaying tactic. "Can I get you something to drink?"

"Sure. But not that," Nick gestures to the forgotten whiskey glass in her hand. "Doesn't mix with the meds. Water is fine."

Olivia goes into the kitchen for a glass and flips through her memories for what she knows about Nick Lane.

She knew him as a child, in Jacksonville. She'd lost track of him until years later and a Fringe case started to involve her, intimately, with images of herself killing people appearing in her dreams. Eventually the team realized they *weren't* dreams, but Nick's own experiences bleeding into her consciousness. They tracked him down and found him on a rooftop, and Olivia put a bullet in his leg to stop his suicidal rampage that had already taken too many lives along the way. The next time she saw him was at a Massive Dynamic "research facility," along with two other Cortexiphan subjects, James Heath and Sally Clark. He'd gained impressive control over his empathic ability and was instrumental in convincing the other two to help Olivia and Walter cross to the other universe to rescue Peter. Things went bad, very quickly, and Nick had died in a shootout with the other side's Fringe agents, his body cremated along with Sally's as she unleashed one last fatal firestorm.

...except none of that happened. Olivia remembers Nick from the daycare in Jacksonville-he was the only one she missed after she ran away. And she'd never seen him again before today.

She walks back out to find Nick standing at military parade rest, alert and waiting for her. "Please, come and sit down. So- I don't even know where to start. How did you find me?"

"Nina Sharp," Nick says, taking a seat on the couch and nodding his thanks for the water. And oh, of course. "I was still at St. Jude's, but when I started *remembering* all those things that never happened...well, at first I thought I was just crazy. Crazier." He gives her a lopsided smile. "But then once I sorted them out, everything started to make sense. All those 'paranoid delusions' were real after all. So I checked myself out, and thought that if Massive Dynamic was involved they'd know everything, and...here I am."

"And your...your abilities?" she feels compelled to ask. Olivia's not afraid of him in the least-the other timeline showed, definitively, that she was immune to his empathic ability-but his manifestation had gone so terribly wrong before.

"Nothing active. Just that kind of low-grade 'hyper-emotiveness' the shrinks tagged me with." He pauses, then adds with some difficulty, "I...wanted to thank you, for stopping me, that other version of me. All those people I didn't mean to kill, and-"

"You didn't, here," Olivia says firmly, and reaches over to take his hand. It's an unusual gesture for her and she knows it, but Nick...she remembers Nick's stuffed bear and his sweet smile.

Nick squeezes her hand but doesn't meet her eyes. "Yeah. I remember them, though. And everything else. I remember...I remember it was okay, that I was gonna die in the other universe, because at least I'd done something to try to make up for that." He glances up briefly. "So...how'd that all work out?"

He does deserve to know, after all. Olivia tells him, in broad strokes, about bringing Peter back and thwarting Director Bishop's plans, and then about how they built the machine over here instead to try to counteract them. "...and somehow, Peter was erased from the timeline and we all forgot him. But now he's come back, and..."

"...and all these memories came with him. Wow." He shakes his head. "That's just *crazy.* And I know crazy. But you know what? I feel so much better now that I know the truth."

"We should probably have Dr. Bishop examine you," she suggests, tentatively.

Nick frowns, then nods. "I- I'm not sure I trust him. But if you say he's okay, then...okay."

Olivia has the strong, disconcerting feeling that he'd go along with anything she proposed. "Nick, you want to go get something to eat? I've been holed up here for a while and I need some fresh air."

"That'd be great. Olivia..." Nick's smile is as sweet as she remembers, now edging toward shy. "I missed you."

"You, too," she says softly, and goes to get her coat.

Over dinner they talk, mostly about Jacksonville and what they remember about the other children there. Olivia makes a mental note to follow up, in case any of them-especially Sally and James-are struggling with the recovered memories too. She mentions Sally out loud, and Nick sighs a little.

"Yeah, I thought about trying to find her. But that was- that was such a special circumstance, the way we hooked up, you know? And from what I remember, Sally..." Nick bites at his lip. "She wanted to take care of me, she liked that, and I kind of want...to take care of myself right now. If that makes sense?"

It does, and she tells him so. Nick tilts his head and looks at her, his brow furrowed. "Olive, are you okay? You seem...I don't know. Down."

"It's all these memories, I..." she starts, but it's a lie, and she can't lie to the concern on his face. "It's Peter. I remember him, I remember loving him and I still do, but- I also remember being without him and it's just, I'm not sure I want to go back." Her face hurts, aching with the truth she's been denying.

"But if you love him, Olive, then why...?" Nick looks honestly puzzled, but she doesn't have an answer.

They finish up dinner and go walking, choosing streets at random and watching the people moving along them. For Nick, Olivia understands, it's still a novelty to be out in the open and free to go where he wants. For her...it's a chance to see the city through new eyes, his eyes, in a way that more gently mirrors what they'd shared before.

As they walk he reaches instinctively for her hand, the way he did as a child, and snatches it back when he realizes. "Sorry, I-"

"No, it's okay," Olivia says, and holds out her own hand. His hand is warm and fits comfortably with hers and they walk together, no longer children at all.

"We were just kids," Nick finally says, very low, "but I loved you. I mean, I know I'm not supposed to say that now. But it's true."

It would be easy, Olivia knows, to deny his feelings. He'd been a child, with a child's raw emotions. They'd been paired together for the experiments, told to lean on each other for support, played and laughed and cried together. The experience would have created close, perhaps inappropriate bonds for anyone involved.

"I loved you too," she says, because it's true. She'd forgotten that, nearly forgotten him. But it's still true.

His face breaks into that wide grin again, and he hugs her hand to his side. They don't say anything else on the way back to her apartment.

{end}


End file.
